Cultural immersion research project

Gold Hill Lutheran Church

2008-11-16T15:48:00.001-08:00

Isn’t anything in this world good enough? Do they have to change everything? Kilometers, kilograms and Celsius temps, and a new liturgy to sing.

Today I and Sam went to the Gold Hill Lutheran Church. We choose to go at the later worship that’s starts at 11. The 8:30 one felt a little bit too early this Sunday morning. Somebody had probably shot a deer earlier this morning for it was one at the back of the trucks parked at the church. Hunting and directly to church! The church is self didn’t really look like an old typical church, more like a community youth center. We really felt welcome, some lady tried to make us wear nametags because of that we were newcomers. She also wanted us to accept that someone should come and inform us about their church at our places. We refused friendly and walked in to their nave. Today the priest introduced their new hymnbook and that made it even harder to follow the jumping between all songs in books and papers. The new hymn book seemed to be a big change for them because the old one was from 78’, almost like a revolution. We probably seemed to be really lost when we were flipping pages in the hymnbook. A woman helped me several times find the right page. Nothing special happened under the worship; we took a shot of wine and we eat some strange bread that the priest crushed in our hands. One the way out we as newcomers was introduced to some people by the usher. They really tried to bind us up to the church. This was probably the church with the highest average age, so they need younger people to their crew

The search for the holy snow and a Mormon Church

2008-11-11T11:44:00.000-08:00

This weekend left me with many cultural experiences, on the way to church. As I couldn’t figure myself staying in Butte this weekend when I just had figured out that Snowbird had their opening day on Friday. On Thursday noon I started to cover the six hour drive down to Utah, didn’t really know what do expect of the upcoming weekend. The skiing culture hasn’t being rooted so deep among my skiing and snowboarding friends here in Butte, various excuses left me alone in my hunt for snow. I spend the first night at the weirdest hostel ever with the weirdo Arthur running the “Camelot Guest House” from his computer monitoring the whole place with Ethernet webcams and charging three different add-on taxes on the starting price. After I drove the overslept violinmaker studying Ross Jones to his additional job I was only forty from Snowbird. Then after turning on to the last exit before the incline to the resort, there they stood a hitchhiking skier with his snowboard friend. A half second later I decided to pick them up. The rest of the weekend I skied with them and stayed at their motor home parked at Wal-Mart. They had their own subculture in this RV, the Lindy from 79 with no heat, no bathroom, no electricity and I didn’t complain. I didn’t have to ski by myself for this weekend! With nothing else to do rather than converse the evenings through I got some god stories and they learned some new words…

I decided to leave them as early as possible Sunday morning to find a Church, , preferably a Mormon Church. After a quick lube service I maneuvered my car towards Salt Lake City’s church/temple area. With the lack of google the past days I didn’t really have so much information about where and what time the Mormons had their masses. So after driving around in circles in the temple area searching for parking I ended up some mile away. I asked some well dressed people with liver spots but they probably thought I looked and smelled like a bum, so they pointed far up a hill for a church that I after some sweat drops later found out was a chapel with zero activates. On the way back to my car I saw some people with worships agendas in their hands. They banged their car doors but when they realized that I was searching for a church the cooled off. With a new direction I headed towards some random church up another hill. Fantastic, they had a mass at eleven and I could get some coffee one staircase down. A real bum used the restroom as his private bathroom. I realized that this was not a Mormon church. I got some free breakfast that I first tried to pay for but later did some donation for. I read on some announcement that this was a church for all, it was typed both in English and in Spanish. Much of the people seemed to be from the lower classes in the society. That fitted me perfect this day after living the past days without the normal day by day luxuries. I went up to the nave of the Cathedral of the Madeleine some minutes before the mass started and it was already a lot of people up there. Before people sat down on the pew the touched the floor with one knee and did the sign of the cross. Later I figured out that it was a catholic church when I spoke with a friend and mentioned the steam that some guy followed the priest with. I could approximate the number of people to around thousand. I felt quite anonymous sitting almost at the back end. Even if I didn’t really participated singing and praying nobody noticed it. The completely opposite when comparing with The Church on the Rock where everybody knew that you were fresh. A lot of people dropped in late to the mass and those ones also left minutes before it was over. I don’t really understand how you could do that. If you believe in God I think you should respect the ceremony to. Not only drop in and then leave before it ends and then check it off on the Sunday list. The music was the most old school music so far. Some lady with grey hair singed opera style and it was impossible to hear her words. At the end all the people walk by this pot of holy water and dipped their fingers and made the cross sign again. I did notice some similar things with this Catholic Church and the Catholic Church in back in Butte. The catholic ones seem to be more old school, not so much joy as in the Baptist or at the church on the Rock.

over and out

/Rikard

Park Street Baptist Church

2008-11-02T18:28:00.000-08:00

Yeah! Another Sunday, another church!...

This starts to be a normal pattern in my Butte Collage life. Partying Saturday (this weekend was my first ever celebration of Halloween), get some hours of sleep before my alarm goes of to early, this Sunday at nine. Fifteen minutes marginal before the worship begins. After some google research i found out that the worship at Park Street Baptist Church doesn't start until 10:30, fantastic, some more minutes in bed.

This is the third church i visit in my cultural study. I can see some connection between the time the worship begins and a conservative look at the Christian religion. The Butte Catholic Community starts at 09:15 and is the church that best confirm the picture i had i mind before this church tour.
Church on the Rock that starts at ten is a little bit more rock'n roll. They have four to five people in the band and no church organ compare to the catholic church. And the baptist church had seven people playing and singin, they even start the worship with rockish church hallelujah music. And the earlier the worship starts, the higher age on people that attends. Both the baptist and the Church on the Rock worships i could classify as power-point-karaoke-events. Today on the baptist they had some kind of commercial for some Christmas giftbox. I thought i was a really god idea to give away shoe boxes filled with presents to people in poor countries. But the commercial made the whole thing feel a bit commercialized. But it made sense. Todays pastor did some connection between Youtube and his Hope topic. That would never had happened in the Catholic church. It's much talk around the finances crises, that it's only numbers. And i really agree with that. Even if you loose some money it's should make you feel bad. It's so much different things to care about. The topic for the day was Hope but the pastor talked so fast, i was almost that i get paid for each ten words he speak out. Hard to listening to. The others that has talked in the churhes had a complety different speaking behavior. More sensed and easier to listen to. Maybe it's me, becuse english is my second language? But i think the majority like like that pastor, new age pastor style, almost a little bit ghetto style.
Much more kids at this worship to. They served coffe and cookies before the worship, that made it a good feeling while entering the worship. And the church was inside a public school and that also helped the un-conservative feeling of worships. And after this meeting some guy invited us to a meeting in the SUB this evening. That they have someone after the worship that connects with new people seems like a returning behavior.

The sum of the days worship is that i choose the Park Street Baptist Church as my favorite so far.

/Rikard

Introduction

2008-10-27T12:54:00.000-07:00

I choose to do my project about religion and worship culture. For me is this is a complete new environment. My mother and father never said a word about religion in any way, neither god or bad. They were married civil and my father left the Swedish church many years ago. My mother haven’t done that because (at least what I think) of that my grandmother sometimes go to the church and have some Christian faith. They don’t verbally offset religion but I have felt some kind of continence of religion on our family my whole growth.
When I was about ~16 and younger I really was anti-religious and didn’t really understand why people were so attracted to religion, I probably should regret some things I said about this subject. I only has/had a total of two, three friends that is Christians and I don’t even know if they regularly go to church on Sundays, but I now they relate to a Christian community. In the town where I grow up the Christian people had their own set. I now one case when a girl went out dancing with her friends at the local nightclub and that place wasn’t really accepted by the community, then the set got malice against here for a while. Things like that made up an awkward picture of the Christian religion. Earlier, people that I have met and said they were religious I put in a certain group of people.
At my three years at the university I have not get in contact with more than, by estimate five people that have a coupling to a Christian community! My home-student-sub-cultures have so small influences by religion so people don’t know that it exists. It never comes up on speak.
When I have been working in Norway for two summers I got more contact with Christians. My boss is Christian and recruited employers from the local Bible Schools. In that way my conservative religious view got a bit smudged by learning to know them.

Today I could say that I have more insight in people’s interest and I have understood that you can’t judge beforehand because of their religion. Or now, at least I try to get rid of my prejudice by get more human understanding in this area.
Here in the US it seems like an enormous percent of the population have a religious beliefs. But no really in the same way as home. Here does even the believing people get really drunk even if God says it’s wrong. I think that is a interesting differentiation.
The last two Sundays I have forced my body to wake up early and go to church. With a reminding dehydration-feeling in my body have I entered two different churches so far, first out was Butte Catholic Community North and yesterday me and my friend went to Church on the Rock after some confusion moments before we realized that the barn looking building was the church.